Once a Teacher…

    Once a teacher, always a teacher…
         Teaching in Nuevo Amanecer 2012

                Teaching in Atlanta 2007

    Last month, I began teaching English in Nuevo Amanecer to some of our kids from our student sponsorship program (pictured above teaching my class). My students are just precious! This class is in addition to their regular school schedule and their families are paying a small monthly fee. This means that the students who are there have such a huge desire to learn English (Adan and Erwin two of my precious students- pictured right).
   It’s so different in Nuevo Amanecer than in Candelaria. The kids in Candelaria are surrounded by English speakers all the time with the teams who are here. For this reason, the children in Candelaria at least understand quite a bit of English. The children in Nuevo Amanecer rarely have a chance to hear native English speakers and really don’t know any English. We are definitely starting with the very basics. We have been practicing basic conversation, vocabulary, and verbs.
 
    I stood under the tin roof of the church one sweltering Saturday afternoon watching my kids take their first exam. I hoped that they were learning, but I kept wondering if they were really understanding. I pondered whether or not these classes were making any difference. Honestly I wasn’t sure.
    However, later that night, the mom of one of my students approached me at the church and told me, “Ramon’s English grades have improved so much already! He made a 95% on his last test in school. He was so proud! His teacher told him to keep up whatever he had been doing that caused such an improvement. He told her that it was because of his new English classes with you.” I felt the familiar pride filling my heart that I always felt in my classroom when I saw that my kids understood something that previously seemed impossible to them. Those light bulb moments were always my favorite part of being a teacher.  

     My classroom in the dirt under the tin roof of the church might look very different than my classroom in Atlanta, and yet it’s surprisingly similar. I now ride my bike through a river, past the recently harvested sugar cane fields and volcanoes, and through the dirt roads to arrive at my “classroom” The atmosphere is different; my kids carry chairs from their homes or sit in the dirt.  Our teaching supplies are limited to a white marker board and one marker. And yet they are just children who are longing to learn. And they are learning.